Kids Aren't Safe In the Metro

Hello everyone! It´s been a crazy week and I´m super pumped to tell you guys everything about it.

I decided to adopt my older brother´s tradition of making song titles the subject of my weekly updates because it´s brilliant and I can´t actually listen to the songs here so it´s the next best thing. This week I chose the song by Satellite Stories because of the events that transpired on the metro that I´ll get to later in this email.

This week has been the slowest week but also the fastest week of my life. The few hours between meals studying Spanish and other things here in the MTC feel like entire days. It´s exhausting but looking back, I feel like it´s crazy that it´s already been a week. I hope that makes sense hahaha. We´ve been learning basics and stuff in Spanish this week and my companion Elder Ward and I have already taught several practice lessons in Spanish. It´s a little frustrating knowing what I want to say during lessons, but not being able to put it into Spanish. But that´s the reason I´m here so I can´t complain too much. After all, I´ve only been here a week.

The first couple of days here were a bit rough since my luggage got delayed in Paris. The MTC president had to lend me some clothes that had been left here by previous missionaries so it wasn´t too bad. Once my bags finally got here a day and a half after, I didn´t really get the chance to unpack so I´ve just been unpacking a little bit at a time whenever I get some freetime which is rare.

My favorite part of the day is probably sports time. I´ve played soccer every time because, well, what else would I possibly want to do with my time? Whenever my district gets paired up with the Portuguese speaking district I know it´ll be a great time. Some of the Elders from Brazil are so increadibly good. Elder Burt (one of the elders in my district) and I are the only Americans that actually play soccer here, but almost all the elders and some of the sisters play every day. There are two court-like fields here close to the MTC that they have nicknames for: The Pit, and The Cage. To me, they sound more like torture chambers than places where you go to play soccer. Playing soccer in Europe is unlike anything in America. Sometimes there will be Spaniards there that we play with as well.

Each Saturday, all the missionaries go to the park and try to find people to teach or make contacts. We all got bundled up this Saturday and got right to it. May I just say: Missionary work is hard. It´s even harder when you barely speak the native language. I know it was my first real experience and all but it made me realize just how discouraging it can be. My temporary park companion (we get a different one each week) and I managed to talk to a few people using mostly English. On the way back to the MTC on the metro, we were proselyting on the train. When we got off at the stop for the MTC, we looked back and as the doors were closing saw two elders that were still on the train (told you I´d explain the subject). They ended up getting back to the MTC okay so no harm done, but we´ve been poking fun at them for the last couples days for it.

Well I love you all and I hope your guys´ weeks have been even half as good as mine has!

- Elder Penner

Each Sunday the missionaries at the Madrid CCM sing on the temple steps, I was able to get a video of this.  Cameron is in the middle row, in the middle.  There is a picture below that is clearer.